In the News

“NDP MP Don Davies said Ottawa could consider issuing a blanket pardon for possession offences that would no longer be illegal under the Liberals’ pot legislation. Otherwise, he said, the government could decide to waive the five-year wait and the roughly $600 fee that Canadians currently face if they want to have their criminal record suspended.”

“The nearly 4,000 people killed by opioids in Canada last year, a third of them in B.C., is proof Ottawa needs to rethink its response, Vancouver-Kingsway MP Don Davies told Metro in a phone interview Sunday.”

“At a December House of Commons health committee meeting, NDP health critic Don Davies pressed the health minister over spending and resources, saying the federal government’s opioid response budget is less than the Public Health Agency of Canada’s communications budget during the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak.”

“NDP health critic Don Davies said thousands of Canadians continue to get arrested, charged and convicted for something that will soon be legal, at a time when the justice system remains clogged and under-resourced.”

“NDP health critic Don Davies urged committee members to take up the issue, citing stark health statistics for Indigenous Canadians, who have an average life span five to seven years below the Canadian average and sky-high rates of tuberculosis.”

NDP MPs pressed Liberals to fully scrap the ban in the lead-up to Tuesday’s announcement. “How can the Liberals offer a sincere and meaningful apology to the LGBTQ community for past injustices when they are practicing discrimination in the present?” NDP health critic Don Davies asked in the House earlier this month.

NDP Health Critic, Don Davies, took possibly the most umbrage with Kent’s words. In a public statement, the Vancouver Kingsway MP called out the Conservative party “to correct the record” and “on Mr. Kent to offer an immediate apology to every Canadian who has been affected by the fentanyl crisis.”